Eternal Life Read Online Free

an idiotic salute.
    “Mandl,” Brenner grumbles. He noticed right away how it’d already began its descent, his dread of the lacquered local reporter with the aristocratic manners.
    “There’s no kaiser anymore, Mandl.”
    “There’s a Lift Kaiser, a Village Kaiser, a Real Estate Kaiser!” Mandl countered so fast that his head gave a little jerk, causing a strand of hair to come loose. Because it’d been glued down with gel, and now it was standing straight up and quivering, just unnatural.
    Back when he was still on the force, Brenner used to tease him sometimes and instead of Mandl he’d call him “Myrtle.” But he hadn’t had anything to do with the reporter from the
Pinzgauer Post
for some time now. And today, no desire at all, because A of all, headache, and B of all, a report to finally get sent off.
    Even though the report wasn’t all that urgent. Quite the opposite. Meierling—you know, the boss of the detective agency—his name wasn’t actually Meierling but Brugger—had warned Brenner several times that he shouldn’t write such pitifully long reports. And last week he even gave orders that if Brenner couldn’t keep it brief, he should kindly include a ten-line summary as an abstract.
    “Nobody reads what you write!” he said, just had to go rubbing Brenner’s nose in it. Now, you should know Brenner’s motto. Because, his motto, write everything down, important or unimportant. And in retrospect, you’ve got to admit, he was right.
    But now of all times, just when he felt like things were gradually falling into place, Mandl gets in his way.
    But, to be perfectly honest, that was only half the truth, why Detective Brenner was in such a lousy mood just then. Listen up, it happened like this. Mandl asks:
    “You on duty, Herr Inspector?” Even though it’d beenover half a year since Brenner had been on the force. And Mandl knew that for a fact.
    Brenner, though, he doesn’t let anything show, no, he says, “I’m always on duty, Mandl.”
    “And when’s quittin’ time?”
    “As soon as I’ve caught him.”
    “So, it’s a him—male perp, lone operator.”
    Mandl actually talked this way. I’ve got to be honest, he wasn’t as bad as everyone made him out to be. He was still young and wanting to make something of himself at the newspaper. But Brenner could only shake his head at this degree of useless enthusiasm.
    “You’ve got a lot to learn, Mandl.”
    Mandl had got him this far, though. He motioned to the waitress for two glasses of white. The Hirschenwirt is one of these old inns with an enormous bar in the lobby, and the two men just happened to be standing in front of it. The waitress set their wineglasses down, and Mandl pulled a violet fifty out of his poison-green shirt pocket. It was enough to make Brenner sick.
    “You trying to lose your very last reader, too?” the detective asks now.
    “What, we’ve got a reader?” Mandl asks, and grins like for the dentist commercials, because ever since his report about the underground bordello in the Brucker Bundesstrasse, he’d had two brand-new crowns put in.
    “With an old story like this, you won’t be coaxing anybody away from the fireside anyhow.”
    “Don’t got a dog, eh? Write an old story, roll up thenewspaper, and throw it. Dog fetches newspaper. Leaves his spot by the fire. Police seize opportunity. Park themselves by the fire. Eh?”
    “What’re you getting at? And why’re you always calling me police?”
    “At what, Inspector? It’s:
At what are you getting?
Because:
From where’d you get your grammar?
”
    How should I put it. Mandl wasn’t putting nothin’ in nobody’s way. He just felt like he had to knock the whole world down, sheer self-importance. Brenner only said:
    “You know what I think? I think you did it. Perverse like you are.”
    “So, a lone operator, good-looking, perverse? That reminds me of something—where exactly is the American?”
    “In America.”
    But this was another